Frank Webb

Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy

Frank Webb has 30 years’ experience of senior management—including organizational leadership, change management and marketing communications strategies—in multilateral organizations and international NGOs that generate comprehensive responses to the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. He has a doctoral degree in physiology from the University of Oxford and was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge.

In 1978, when a consultant to the World Health Organization, he was asked to manage the start-up and implementation of collaboration with China in research in women’s health. Over ten years, this successful program grew to become the largest and most comprehensive program of capacity development for research ever provided to a single country. From 1990 Frank oversaw similar activities throughout the Asia and Pacific region, including substantial projects in Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, North Korea and Viet Nam. From 1993, he was one of a small team that completely restructured WHO’s programs in sexual and reproductive health and defined the strategic plan for global research in those fields for the next 5-10 years.

In Washington, DC from 1998 he was director of a U.S. Agency for International Development global project in women’s health, before joining the senior management of FHI (now FHI 360), a large international non-profit with headquarters in Durham, NC. Since 2006 he has been an independent consultant, undertaking assignments for China’s National AIDS Coordination Committee and the State Commission on Population and Family Planning and a 14-month assignment as CEO guiding the transition of a small volunteer-based organization to a vibrant professional NGO that improves hospital equipment management in Africa, Asia and Central America.

At the Duke Center for International Development since 2006, Frank has taught courses on leadership under the SAFEA executive education program. He currently teaches a course on capacity development and aid effectiveness and another on project management for international development in the Master’s program in International Development Policy.

Recent Courses

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